Northern California

Geographic area and background

The Northern California Region includes the North Coast Ranges, Klamath Mountains, southern Cascade Range, Modoc Plateau, and the Sacramento Valley and foothills. This region has a Mediterranean climate with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers that are very conducive to fire. The area contains notably complex vegetation and terrain, and it has a history of national policy-defining fires (e.g., Siege of 1987, Megram 1999, Biscuit 2002, Northern California Lightning Siege 2008, and others). The region also features diverse land management and ownership patterns, including national forests and grasslands, national parks, national recreation areas, and national monuments, national and state wildlife refuges, tribal lands, state parks, managed rangelands, and millions of acres managed by the forest industry and private non-industrial forestland owners.

Northern California Research Briefs & Synthesis

Research Brief/Management Consideration. One topic that is generating a great deal of interest among fire management professionals as California enters the fall prescribed fire season is whether we should be burning during this fourth year of drought. This brief discusses what managers should consider before doing a prescribed burn.

A study published in Ecology Letters suggests that the effects of drought and fire work in combination, such that forests experiencing drought will see more dead trees in the aftermath of wildfires.View USGS Research Brief PDF >

Authors of this paper present quantitative information on the differences in stand structure, fuel loading, and fire behavior in current and reconstructed riparian and upland areas in the Sierra Nevada.View Research Brief PDF >

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of thinning treatments on fuel moisture and determine whether or not moisture patterns differ by treatment in mixed conifer stands in northern California.View Research Brief PDF >

In a 2011 paper, researchers examined the short-term consequences of mechanical thinning for forest animal abundance and diversity by summarizing the results of 33 studies from throughout the continent.View Research Brief PDF >

This paper offers a reconstruction of historic fire regimes and forest age structures in a mixed-­‐ conifer forest in the Klamath Mountains of northern California, demonstrating the historic importance of temporal and spatial controls on fire in the area, and providing critical context for current restoration and management activities.View Research Brief PDF >

North and Hurteau (2011) investigated the forest carbon tradeoffs of wildfire in treated and untreated mixed-­‐conifer forests, as well as the carbon cost of implementing fuels reduction treatments.View Research Brief PDF >

Mastication is an increasingly popular fuels treatment, particularly in densely populated or otherwise complex areas where prescribed fire would be difficult or impossible to implement.View Research Brief PDF >

Models of fisher habitat selection and metapopulation dynamics in the southern Sierra Nevada suggest the negative effects of fuel treatments on fisher habitat suitability and population size are generally smaller than the long-­‐term positive effects of fuel treatments that reduce wildfire risk and severity.View Research Synthesis PDF >

Sudden oak death (SOD), a forest disease caused by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, is a good example of a recently introduced disease with unknown implications for forest health and future disturbances. In the dry tanoak forests of northern California, the potential relationships between SOD and fire are of particular concern.View Research Brief PDF >

An increase in the frequency and spatial extent of stand-replacing fires in western North America has prompted concern for California spotted owls and other sensitive species associated with late-successional forests.View Research Brief PDF >

A century of fire exclusion in the western United States has altered oak woodland landscapes, resulting in severe compositional and structural changes that influence species diversity and distribution, fuel loading, and fire behavior and effects.View Research brief PDF >

This review paper describes geographical variation of mixed severity fire regimes in Pacific temperate forests and summarizes known information about fire effects and ecology in relation to the vegetation types characterized by such regimes. View Research Brief PDF >

The National Fire and Fire Surrogates (FFS) study was designed to evaluate differences among alternative fuels reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests throughout the country, and to test the assumption that mechanical treatments might be used to accomplish the same stand structure and ecological goals as prescribed fire.

Stand-replacing patch size was highly variable in a high elevation mixed conifer forest in the Sierra Nevada with a range of variation dominated by many small patches < 10 acres (4 ha) and few large patches >148 acres (60 ha).View Research Brief PDF >

The authors conducted prescribed burns in two masticated areas in northern California to assess fire effects in treated stands, compare fire behavior and effects with outputs from commonly used models, and evaluate the ability of mastication to increase stand resilience under a range of hypothetical wildfire scenarios.

In this paper, Agee and Skinner reviewed related literature, simulated fire behavior in different treatment types, and considered five real-­‐world examples of fuels treatments and wildfire. Using these methods, they distilled a set of basic principles underlying effective treatments that reduce fuels and limit wildfire severity and extent.View Research Brief PDF >

LiDAR surveys in conjunction with satellite-based remote sensing analysis can help forest managers better understand the changes in forest structure due to fires. Surveys can suggest whether prescribed burns can be used to thin canopy structure in different forest types and restore them to historic patterns.

Past Events and Webinars

Join us for the 2018 meeting of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council! This year's meeting will include a field tour, evening social, and full-day meeting in beautiful Mt. Shasta, CA. We hope you can join us!

This field tour will visit nearby fuel breaks and discuss good and bad examples, fuel break maintenance, funding and cost-share programs for fuels reduction, methods for fuel break construction and maintenance, and the current status of area fuel breaks.

We are happy to announce our Fall 2015 NorCalTREX, which will take place October 20-November 1 throughout northern California. Please see the announcement for information, and visit the application website for more details and to apply: www.trexregistration.weebly.com

Join us at the UC Hopland Research & Extension Center. Participants will learn about fuel hazard reduction treatments, tour a 10-year old fire/fire-surrogate study, and help build a decision support tool for Chaparral.

Other Resources

This bibliography of pivotal fire science papers is specific to Northern California. It is organized by ecosystem type, making it easy for you to look up some of the critical works that apply to your management area. Release date: 2011.

The Northern California Prescribed Fire Council is a venue for practitioners, state and federal agencies, academic institutions, tribes, coalitions, and interested individuals to work collaboratively to promote, protect, conserve, and expand the responsible use of prescribed fire in Northern California’s fire-adapted landscapes.

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The California Fire Science Consortium is divided into 4 geographic regions and 1 wildland-urban interface (WUI) team. Statewide coordination of this program is based at UC Berkeley. View the about page to learn more >